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Trusts, Estates & Private Wealth Management

The Trusts, Estates, and Private Wealth Management practice provides comprehensive legal counsel to individuals, families, fiduciaries, and family offices on the preservation, transfer, and stewardship of personal and generational wealth. With a focus on tax efficiency, family governance, and asset protection, attorneys in this practice craft tailored strategies that reflect clients’ financial goals, values, and legacies.

This practice serves high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs), ultra-high-net-worth individuals (UHNWIs), business owners, executives, and multigenerational families with domestic and international interests.

Core services include:

  • Estate Planning and Wealth Transfer
    • Designing and implementing wills, revocable and irrevocable trusts, generation-skipping transfer (GST) strategies, and other tools to minimize estate and gift tax exposure while achieving personal and philanthropic objectives.
  • Trust Administration and Fiduciary Counseling
    • Advising trustees, executors, and fiduciaries on their legal duties, distribution strategies, investment management, trust modification, and beneficiary communications.
  • Tax Planning and Compliance
    • Structuring estate, gift, and generation-skipping tax strategies; preparing IRS filings (e.g., Form 706, 709); and advising on income tax considerations for complex trusts and estates.
  • Business Succession Planning
    • Crafting succession plans for closely held businesses and family enterprises, including family limited partnerships, buy-sell agreements, and governance structures to ensure smooth leadership transitions.
  • Charitable Planning and Philanthropy
    • Advising on the formation and operation of private foundations, donor-advised funds, charitable trusts, and planned giving strategies to support long-term philanthropic goals with tax efficiency.
  • Asset Protection and Risk Management
    • Developing domestic and offshore structures to safeguard personal and family assets from potential liabilities, creditor claims, or marital disputes.
  • Family Governance and Legacy Planning
    • Facilitating family meetings, education, and governance planning to promote intergenerational communication, stewardship, and alignment around shared wealth values.
  • International Estate and Tax Planning
    • Advising globally mobile families on cross-border estate planning, pre-immigration planning, foreign trust compliance, FATCA reporting, and international tax treaties.

The following individuals practice in this area:

John R. Branson
John R. Branson

John R. Branson

Senior Attorney

John R. Branson, Esq. is a Senior Attorney with extensive experience representing clients in complex litigation, arbitration, and mediation matters across a wide range of industries and legal disciplines. Throughout his career, Mr. Branson has handled high-stakes disputes involving commercial transactions, corporate governance, intellectual property, securities, healthcare, and construction matters, as well as sensitive investigations involving fraud, public corruption, and regulatory enforcement. Rather than limiting his practice to a narrow specialty, Mr. Branson has developed a broad litigation practice that allows him to effectively represent clients in multifaceted disputes requiring both strategic legal insight and practical business judgment. He has served as lead and co-lead counsel in numerous jury and non-jury trials, including a month-long class-action jury trial that resulted in a multi-million-dollar settlement. Mr. Branson also has significant experience in alternative dispute resolution, having participated in numerous arbitrations before the American Arbitration Association (AAA), the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD), and the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board (MSRB), as well as many judicial and non-judicial mediations. In addition, he has handled more than a dozen appellate matters before the Tennessee Court of Appeals, the Supreme Court of Tennessee, and the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Mr. Branson’s practice focuses on the following: He can be reached via telephone at (866) 582-2586 and via email at jrb@jwlinternational.com.

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We negotiate, document, and provide follow-on legal services for equipment manufacturers, distributors, dealers, and lessors worldwide.

Over many years, our attorneys have successfully negotiated, documented, and closed a vast array of business transactions, including manufacturer-dealer relationships as well as business purchases, sales, leases, and financing transactions throughout North America and in over 20 countries.

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